Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The sheer scope of fraud within the regime's ministries has caused a collapse of public trust. So much so that Hamid Karzai's corrupt dominion arguably constitutes a greater threat to the long-term security of Afghanistan than anything those back-country no-hopers known as the Taliban are capable of mustering on the battlefield.

Kent offers a dizzying array of examples of corrupt government officials linked to warlords and drug barons. Of particular note is this passage about Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet:

So is Hamid Karzai's Attorney General really in league with the heroin gangs? It's a question that should interest the government of Canada for at least two reasons. First, heroin profits help finance the Taliban's war effort. Second, Sabet boasts to friends of enjoying residency in Canada: his wife and children live in Montreal. Yet officials in Ottawa - at Foreign Affairs, Immigration and the Prime Minister's Office - have refused since mid-March to confirm the status of President Karzai's rogue Attorney General.

Sabet's past is littered with reasons that he should never have gained entry into Canada, particularly due to his long history of association with the black prince of Afghan extremists, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Sabet was a longtime counsellor to Hekmatyar, once the United States' most-favoured anti-Soviet guerrilla leader, but now on their most-wanted list of terrorists.

He gave an example of a current $85 million project to help Afghanistan's fledgling financial sector. Highly paid foreign managers would pocket a large slice of the cash."Only 40 percent goes to the project, 60 percent goes to the managers. Out of that 60 percent, perhaps 80 percent goes into the pockets of foreigners. It is going out of Afghanistan," he said.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Journalists and Reporters without Borders have recently both condemned the Karzai government over the illegal arrests of two journalists who criticized the regime. (One of the journalists, Kamran Mir Hazar, has since been released; Asif Nang is still being held.) From the IFJ press release regarding Asif Nang, editor of a government-owned magazine:

The Afghan president was reportedly angered by an article Nang had written titled “Afghanistan as a football between the large oil companies”, and ordered his arrest.